Communication networks have migrated from using specialized networking equipment executing on dedicated hardware, like routers, firewalls, and gateways, to software defined networks (SDNs) executing as virtualized network functions (VNF) in a cloud infrastructure. To provide a service, a set of VNFs may be instantiated on the general purpose hardware. Each VNF may require one or more network devices or virtual machines (VMs) to be instantiated. In turn, VMs may require various resources, such as memory, virtual computer processing units (vCPUs), and network interfaces or network interface cards (NICs). Determining how to assign these resources among VMs in an efficient manner may be unbearably complex.
In building resiliency in the physical transport network today, individual platforms use design rules for creating diverse links and survivability. In a shared transport network, the aggregation of various traffic types on common physical spans can create high risk for major outages when physical paths go down due to fiber cuts, transport equipment failures, fiber degradation, etc. Long single threaded spans with aggregation of more and more traffic on common spans can also result in high risk of major customer impacting outages. Currently, when a network threat is detected, reactive controls are used to stop traffic causing the network harm, for example, volume related congestion or hacker attacks. These controls provide priority connections to make the most efficient use of network resources and inhibit traffic congestion to prevent it from spreading and overwhelming the network. The most common prioritization is to limit communications into an area experiencing an event while allowing communications from within the event area out. In a software defined network environment, it is desirable to improve this response by providing greater flexibility in prioritizing network use in an affected area, leveraging existing spares or otherwise expanding the network to address a threat event. It is also desirable to proactively develop strategies to respond to various threats.
This disclosure is directed to solving one or more of the problems in the existing technology.